A man in Toronto was charged $14388.87 ($18,518.50, Canadian) for a five mile ride with Uber.
He posted the staggering receipt for his Friday evening ride to his Instagram account, Votethehish, and his friend, Emily Kannard, took to Twitter saying that the ride app wouldn’t refund his money initially either.
The ride would normally cost somewhere between $12 and $16 according the Slate.
What a trip. A man in Toronto was charged a staggering $14388.87 ($18,518.50, Canadian) for a five mile ride Friday
The brief trip was from 12a Widmer St. to 30 The Queensway, and took just over 20 minutes.
‘My friend was charged 18K for a 20 Min ride (!), and they are sticking to it. What in the world??? This is insane!’ Kannard tweeted at the company on Saturday.
However, Uber soon acknowledged there was an error.
‘There was an error here and it has been resolved,’ Uber said in a statement.
‘We have provided a full refund to this rider and apologized to him for this experience. We have safeguards in place to help prevent something like this from happening, and we are working to understand how this occurred.’
Ride sharing apps like Uber and Lyft are known to charge more when demand increases, but this rider certainly wasn’t dealing with a surge that would go anywhere nearly that high.
The man’s friend, Emily Kennard, tweeted about the incident and said they were sticking to the bill for the trip- however Uber later said they refunded the rider and apologized
In New York City Monday, after a terror attack, commuters trying to get to work while public transportation was down were seeing prices shoot up nearly four times the normal rates.
Riders were left struggling to get to work after being forced out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal after an explosion at 7.20am.
Bangladeshi national Akayed Ullah, 27, who is a cab driver from Brooklyn, set off the homemade pipe bomb device prematurely while walking through the subway transit tunnel between the terminal and Penn Station.
It sparked rush hour chaos which included road closures and subways coming to a halt, prompting commuters to find alternative ways to get to work.
Many turned to the ridesharing apps but were horrified to discover prices had crept up by as much as four times the normal amount because of the increased demand.
Uber said it disabled the surging within minutes of reading news of the explosion online and said it had begun reimbursing passengers who paid extra.
Surging occurs automatically when there is increased demand in one area.
Uber prices surged on Monday morning for more than two hours after an attempted terrorist attack at Port Authority Bus Terminal at 7.20am. The demand was felt all over the city
But New Yorkers who were affected by the chaos of the blast were requesting cars all over the city after having to adjust their commutes due to train and bus closures.
In one case, a passenger paid $50 to travel 30 blocks.
Another told DailyMail.com that a journey which ordinarily costs her around $28 had skyrocketed to $75.
‘Shame on you Uber!’ were among the outraged comments from disgruntled app users as they were confronted by the increase while trying to move out of affected zones.
Both services said they were offering refunds to anyone who paid more than normal.
‘For passengers who did incur higher prices as a result of Prime Time in the Port Authority area, we plan to proactively reimburse them,’ Scott Coriell, a Lyft spokesperson, said.